Obvara

Obvara pottery, sometimes referred to as "Baltic Raku" is a simple and primitive ceramic technique that is frequently used by pit fire, raku, barrel kiln and saggar fire practitioners. But obvara firing is unique enough to hold a place of its own.

My personal collection of material to work on obvara is all organic, mostly flour, sugar, salt and yeast. My collection of material to work on raku is primarily inorganic (feldspars, silica and oxides) along with a material to cause the reduction in the container post firing.

While both techniques do manipulate the pot after it is removed from the kiln, that is about the end of the similarity.

A more complete explanation of obvara is available at: Obvara - The Best Smelling Bread You'll Never Eat – LickinFlames

Essentially, the unglazed piece is taken from the kiln at something around 1400 degrees and dipped into a yeasty mixture, something like a thin waffle batter (we sometimes refer to it as "goo"). The goo is a simple mixture of water, flour (any bread grain will do in our experience), yeast and sugar. It's a very "bakerly" or "kitchenery" process

Yes. We have tried various flours: enriched, wholewheat, bread, cake, semolina and so forth. We have added extra gluten flour to the dry mix. There is very little visible difference between these experiments in the finished work because of the type of flour.

We have tried natural dye material and that was ineffective. Most likely the dye chemicals burned off, as most organic matter would. Even the flour is turned into black (or dark brown) carbon traces.

The longer the pot stays in the air after removal from the goo, the darker the carbon markings will be. It is possible to leave the pot in the air “too long,” letting the carbonizing flour overtake the light patterning, or make the edges of the patterns a bit blurred by the smoke. Some incredible looks from obvara are a result of controlling the heat and denying the piece of oxygen to enable the flour to carbonize. You need to experiment.

When the piece has developed a look that we enjoy it is placed into water to stop the process (and the smoke blur). Dipping the piece into the goo at various speeds, double dipping and the direction of the dip has a lot to do with the color development as does the temperature of the pot.

The buttons, pins and bowls we make are individually formed...one at a time. The pieces are dried, sponged, sanded, scraped, terra sigillata and other colored slips are applied, or glazes may be inlaid before firing. There is usually an array of samples in our shawl pin section of our store to give you an idea of the variety we can achieve with our approach.

Still, with all of the control we think we have in the process, working in obvara results in surprises. The colors, textures and patterns will be different on each piece.

Questions? You can always email Jim and ask him for some additional clarification. Or you can purchase a huge amount of information based on our extensive experiments and experiences at: Obvara - The Best Smelling Bread You'll Never Eat – LickinFlames

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